Chad Silverstein shows leaders how to ask questions that surface real team needs and honest feedback. He recommends specific prompts like "What's the best gift a leader can give you?" and warns against the Triple Ds: defend, deny, destroy. The goal is learning from frontline staff without shutting them down.
Chapters
If you're a leader, here's some good questions you can ask people on your team. It's so important to ask good questions. You know, you can literally start to see things completely different and shift your mindset, lift people up around you, change the direction of your company with something as simple as asking questions. But for real growth as a leader, here are some that I highly recommend. The first is what's the best gift on leader can give you? And if you could just tee that up in one of your practices, one of your meetings with your team, and one of the lunches that you're sitting around hanging out with people that you work with, what's the best gift a leader can give you? If you tune into it, they're basically telling you what they want to see from you, what they want. You'll most likely hear things like time, you know, more one on one. You'll hear people say things like experience, belief, whatever it is, make a mental note and then give that to the person that's asking for it and just do it in a roundabout way so that they don't know that you're doing it for yourself. But it's a great question for a leader to ask. Again, you know, what's the best gift a leader can give you? And your team will just tell you what they would expect. So very powerful question. Another thing is you can ask people to do this cool exercise and ask them, what should we start, stop and keep doing? And we used to do this all the time and we'd put it up on a whiteboard and we would list these things up. And as a leader, you're going to start to really have your eyes open with, you know, what your team really is thinking. Because if you're giving them a green light and you're not shutting down any answers, what you should start, stop and keep doing is going to be very eye opening for your company. So I used to make this a discipline that I would do with my team very often so that I can learn and see what people are thinking. They're on the front lines, they're the ones answering the phones, they're the ones training new employees. And things change and they evolve over time and I want to know, you know, what's going on and where have things changed? Why do I feel a shift in the culture? And this exercise usually can bubble up and identify some of the things that are causing either potential issues or the catalyst for why things are doing and going great. And you want to do more of it. You know, if you're a real strong core leader. You can ask people to hit you with feedback and ask them what you could be doing better. And most likely as a leader, just so you know, you're going to hear crickets because no one's going to tell you anything, especially if they don't trust you. And if you ask that question, you want to know from your teammates how you can get better and what you could be doing different, you better be prepared to shut your mouth. Because if they hit you with the truth, which is a gift because they're thinking it anyway, so you might as well know you can't respond. So there's something called the Triple Ds. I unfortunately, am a master triple D. Er, the triple D is when you hear something and you defend, deny or destroy whatever is being said. You know, as the founder of my company in 25 years, it was hard for me to not think that I don't know more than everyone else in the company. I mean, I did every position. So when people try to tell me things, I could triple dm. Even if I'm wrong, I could triple DM because I just had so much experience. But it is the worst thing for you to do as a leader because what you do when you defend, deny or destroy someone's comments, they'll never say anything to you ever again. You're instilling that fear. You're giving them that vile feeling that they can't talk. And so the next time they've got something that will help you, they're not going to tell you. We call this silent sabotage because you've triple D them and you don't even know how good of a triple dealer you are. So you need to have some awareness and have some courage to ask people to give you some feedback about what you could be doing better and be prepared to hear what you may not want to hear. It may not be true. And I say sit on it, process it, don't react to it. But there's some real strength in a leader who knows who they are and they're comfortable asking and getting feedback and then making a choice of whether or not you want to do something with that feedback or not do something with that feedback. So there are some few questions you could ask people on your team in order to get better. And I'm sure you can come up with a lot more, but those are some of my favorites.
